Soccer, Cake
by rvjones
It is lunch-break and Samuel, the auditor, in his old, sad, shiny suit, looks out through the dirty steel windows and sees a ball bounce.
Bounce, bounce, bounce; a plastic soccer ball, greasy, once white; then Samuel hears some men shout and one of the cleaners in orange overalls runs across the yard, traps the ball, turns and flicks it back across the concrete.
Sam opens the window (it is stiff) and looks down. There are four cleaners in their orange dungarees, two mechanics in dark blue, and a boy from another office, his white collar undone, his navy tie flapping. The men and boy are shouting, laughing, cheating as they lean illegally into each other, stick out elbows, trip. The boy is the best, weaving through the others, dazzling, scorning the big-booted lunges, but refusing to shoot, preferring to lay on a pass for someone in blue to tap home.
The boy is sixteen. Samuel is almost four times his age, but Sam feels the sun in his face, smells something he had forgotten, and he finds himself going quickly down the back stairs, out through the metal fire-doors and into the yard. He has already taken off his jacket and is placing it on a plastic chair (one goalpost) and just as he finishes, the ball flashes past the keeper but not past Sam who side-foots it off the line and back into play.
He is drafted into the team with the mechanics and the boy; against the oranges.
The boy is called Frankie. He plays Sunday mornings for a local side. Sam drops into defence and starts to wave and the boy knows (just knows) that Sam used to play a bit. He starts to run into the spaces where he knows the ball will be, sent by an old man, and within five minutes they have scored five to nothing. It's hot but Sam is strolling, using his brain, not needing to rush, not needing to hurry. The cleaners have stopped laughing.
They would play longer but from another door, a woman emerges carrying a cake. She tells them it is spare, from a board-meeting yesterday. It might be a little stale but it's good. So the men stop, take swigs from a tap in the yard, then sit down to eat and enjoy the sun.
Now they all feel the heat, but they are laughing now, laughing again. One of the foreign cleaners who speaks a little English points to the boy and says "Beck-ham", then to Sam and says, "Bobby Moore." The other cleaners laugh. One of the mechanics nods respect.
Two of the cleaners are from Croatia, one is a Kurd, the fourth, who is tall and gangly and has short scrubby hair, is from Ethiopia. His teeth are so white they flash in the sun. He laughs and raises a piece of cake in salute to Samuel, and says "Bobby Moore!" again before taking a bite. There is cream on his shiny black face, chocolate on his teeth but he is grinning.
Samuel eats his cake, sits in the sun. He thinks of diagnoses, the pancreas, uncontrolled mitosis. He wonders about his seven footballing mates, whether any of them will manage a gentle death. On Sunday the boy will fly down the wing, send in a cross, and a lout of a centre-forward will crash the ball home in some semi-final. The boy will marry, at least, have kids, at least, kick a ball around for a while.
Sam gets up, walks to the rusty tap in the dirty yard, lets the water run, swills his face, wets his hair. Then he leans back, feels the heat again.
rvjones is a widely published literary fiction writer under many pseudonyms. Publications include Atlantic Monthly Unbound, Mississippi Review, Archipelago, and Eclectica.